A Different Flesh (38 page)

But he could not eat
free
or see it or do it. The closest he could come to it in his own mind was
do whatever I want
. Right now he was full and felt well. He wouldn't have minded coupling, but Ken and Melody had taken him away from his females and he found human women ugly. Still, he was reasonably content. Did that make him
free
? He didn't know.

“Come on, Matt,” Melody said. “We have to get moving. We've imposed on these good people quite enough, that's obvious.” She walked out of the kitchen.

“Don't take it that way, Melody,” Emily said. “Isaac just—”

“Never mind,” Ken said, before anyone else could talk. “You put us up for the night, and we're grateful. We all share wanting to make things better for sims, and that's enough, isn't it?”

Nobody said anything. Matt wondered what the answer to the question was. In the towers, people had wanted answers to questions all the time, and were upset when they didn't get them. But Ken and Melody and Isaac and Emily were just leaving this one lying around. Matt shook his head at the vagaries of people.

Melody came back wearing rubber gloves and carrying a razor and a syringe. “Give me your arm, Matt,” she said.

Not need
, he protested.
Feel good
.

He had said the same thing back in the towers, and had the same success with it: none. “Give me your arm,” Melody repeated. “You want to keep feeling good, don't you?”

He nodded resignedly and held out his right arm. The hair on its underside had been shaved a few days before he left the tower, but it was growing in again. The razor scraped it away, leaving a long, narrow stretch of pinkish-brown skin exposed. Now Melody could see exactly where to put the needle.

Matt's lips skinned back from his teeth in a grimace of pain. The people in the towers were much better at using the syringe. They hardly hurt him at all. Finally, the ordeal was done. Melody left the syringe on the table. “Boil it or put it in a glass full of bleach before you throw it away,” she said to Emily and Isaac. “Make sure you get rid of that virus.”

Not sick, nothing wrong
, Matt signed, adding a moment later,
But arm hurts
.

“We're glad you feel all right,” Melody said, smiling in a way that made her seem more appealing to Matt than she had before, “but the virus is still in your blood. We don't want to take any risk of its spreading.”

Matt sighed. The people in the tower had talked that way, too, but it made no sense to him.
Blood is blood
, he signed.

“Never mind,” Ken said again. “Let's get going.”

Matt accompanied him and Melody out to the horseless in front of Emily's and Isaac's house. Isaac stayed behind inside. Emily waved from the porch. The morning sun glinted off a gold front tooth.

Ken started the horseless. He and Melody shared the front seat; Matt had the back to himself. “Springfield?” Ken asked as he pulled out into traffic.

“Springfield,” Melody agreed. “I've got the town map here.”

“We won't need that for a few hours,” he said. “All I need to worry about now is finding my way to Via LXVI westbound.”

Matt listened to the two people with half an ear at best. He watched houses, trees, open spaces go by. That wasn't very interesting, either. He'd done too much of it already, the last few days. After a while, one house, one tree, one open space looked like another. If anything could be more boring for him than traveling in a horseless, he had no idea what it was.

His eyes tried to glaze, but even that was denied him; it was too early in the day for him to fall asleep. He played with his fingers for a bit. That soon palled. He started to stroke himself, then stopped. For some reason, he knew, people did not like anyone doing that out in the open.

He started to sing instead. His song had no words; his tongue and lips could not shape them. But the hoots and grunts he let out in their place had rhythm of a sort, a rhythm he made plainer by pounding on his thighs with the palm of his hands. His head bobbed happily. As far as he was concerned, it was a fine song.

He was the only one who thought so. Before very long, Ken burst out, “Will you please stop that infernal racket?”

Matt subsided; he was used to obeying people. But he was not pleased about it this time. He held up his hands so Ken could see them in the mirror.
Like my song
, he signed grumpily.

“Is that what you call it?” Ken said. “I don't.”

Matt held up his hands again.
Not free to sing
? he asked.
Not free
?

Ken almost drove off the road. “Watch where you're going,” Melody exclaimed. “What's the matter with you?” Ken told her what the matter was; she laughed and laughed. She turned round in her seat so she could sign with Matt as well as speak to him. “Sing all you like.”

He opened his mouth to begin again, then paused.
Why laugh
? he asked.

“Because—because—” Melody stopped, finally resuming, “Because we do want to help sims be freer, but it still surprised us to have a sim—you—use the word to us.”

Matt made an uncertain noise deep in his throat. That didn't seem very funny to him. He gave up and started to sing again. Ken made a noise remarkably similar to his, but he didn't say anything.

They got to Springfield before noon; Ken drove around a while, trying to find the next safe house. “Fancier part of town than I expected,” he observed. The house was bigger than the ones where they had stayed before and the yard had a fence around it, but Matt, who was used to the immense DRC towers, remained unimpressed. He yawned. If riding all day in a horseless was the way to freedom, he was beginning to doubt that he wanted any part of it.

His boredom fell away as he walked through the front gate. A female sim of about his own age was on her hands and knees in front of the house, weeding in a flower bed.
“Hoo!”
he said enthusiastically.

The female looked over her shoulder and smiled at him.
“Hoo!”
she said back. Her backside twitched a little.

“Uh-oh,” Ken and Melody said at the same time. Matt paid little attention to them. Something else was on his mind.

A plump, middle-aged man came out on the front porch of the house. “Hello, my friends,” he said. “I'm glad to see you. I'm Saul. Rhoda is on the phone, but she'll be out in a moment, I'm sure.”

“Glad to see you, Saul.” Ken nodded toward the female sim. “And who is this?”

“Lucy?” Saul frowned. Then he looked from her to Matt. Matt saw that Saul was not looking at his face. He looked down at himself. His enthusiasm was quite visible. “Oh,” Saul said. “I see.”

“Yes,” Ken said. He did not sound happy.

“Well,” Saul said, and let that hang for a while before resuming as if with happy inspiration, “let's go inside and eat lunch. After that we can see what comes up.” He looked at Matt again, and broke into a laugh that sounded anything but cheerful.

The prospect of food was almost enough to divert Matt from Lucy. He went with Ken and Melody to join Saul inside, with only a brief sideways glance at the female sim.

Lucy put down the trowel she had been using and started to follow everyone else in. Matt felt a smile spread over his face. Food, a female—maybe this was what Ken and Melody meant by
freedom
. He had had this much back in the tower, but outside, at least, no one did hurtful things to him, save for the injection each morning. He'd had that before too, along with much else, none of it pleasant. Getting away from those proddings, pokings, and stickings made even long stretches of riding in a horseless seem not too bad.

But then he heard Saul say, “Lucy, why don't you stay outside and finish what you're doing? Rhoda will bring you something soon, I'm sure.”

Matt let out an indignant grunt and sent a look of appeal to Ken and Melody. He was surprised and dismayed when they sided with Saul. “Come on, Matt,” Ken said. “Lunch first. We'll worry about everything else later.”

Sulkily, Lucy went back to work. Before she did, though, she gave Matt a glance full of promise from beneath her brow-ridges. He let himself be steered into the house, but all he noticed about lunch was that there was a lot of it. He ended up not being hungry anymore, but with no idea of what he'd eaten.

After a while, Lucy did come in, to use the toilet. Before she could get into the same room as Matt, Rhoda found something for her to do out in the back yard. Again Ken and Melody failed to interfere. Matt glowered at them. This did not strike him as anything like
freedom
.

Finally he had waited as long as he could. He got up and started toward the back of the house. “The toilet isn't through that door,” Ken said sharply.

Matt snorted.
Not want toilet
, he signed.
Want
—His forearm pumped graphically.

“No!” All the people in the room spoke together.

The flat refusal brought Matt up short, and also made him angry.
Yes
, he signed, nodding so vigorously that his long, chinless jaw thumped against his chest.
Want to couple. Not couple since leave tower. Want to. You, you couple, Yes
? He pointed at Saul and Rhoda.

Rhoda was even rounder than her husband. She turned pink at the question, but answered, “Yes, of course we do.” Saul nodded.

Matt turned to Ken and Melody.
You, you couple, yes
?

They both turned pink, and looked away from each other for a moment. “Yes, we do,” Ken admitted at last. He still did not look at Melody until she reached out and took his hand in hers.

Now female for me
, Matt signed.
I couple too
. He headed for the back door again.

“No!” everyone said again.

Now he stared at them in disbelief.
Not free to couple
? he signed.
Not free
? That had worked just this morning; he was sure it would again.

But it failed. “No, Matt,” Melody told him. “I'm sorry, but you're not free to couple.”

Not free
? Matt signed, wondering if he had heard correctly.
Why not free
? When his hands had finished signing, they curled of themselves into fists. He saw Melody—and everyone else—look alarmed at that. Sims were stronger than people.

Their fear did not stop them from arguing with him, though. Ken said, “You can't couple with Lucy because you still have the AIDS virus in you. If you couple with her, you'll give her the same sickness you have.”

Not sick
, Matt protested.
Feel fine. Feel fine long time now. You give medicine—hurt arm—so I feel fine, yes
?

“You feel fine, yes,” Melody said, “but what makes you sick is still in you, and can go out when you couple. And we have no medicine for Lucy. I'm sorry, Matt.” She spread her hands in a gesture sims and people shared.

Matt only shook his head in reply. What she said made no sense to him. If he felt well, how could he have anything inside him that made him sick? And when he mated, the only thing that came out of him was jism. Jism was just jism. How could it make a female sick?

Besides—
In tower
, he signed,
couple with many females. They not sick now. Why this female here get sick, if they not sick now
? He grinned, pleased at his own cleverness: it was a bigger mental effort than he usually made.

The people seemed to understand that too. Ken rolled his eyes—something else that was not part of sign-talk but that Matt understood—and said to no one in particular, “Just what we need, a sim who cites precedent on us.”

That Matt did not follow. He did not waste time on it in any case, for Melody was saying to him, “The female sims in the DRC—in the tower—had the AIDS virus in them too, so it didn't matter if you coupled with them. They were already ill the same way you are.”

They not ill. They feel fine
, Matt signed.
Feel good
. His hips moved involuntarily as he remembered how good the females back at the tower had felt. He wanted that feeling again.

Melody still would not let him go. “Matt,” she persisted, “those females in the tower were getting medicine too, just like you, weren't they?”

Yes, and they feel fine
, Matt answered.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Saul broke in. “If you're thinking of letting him couple with Lucy, you two, Rhoda and I will have to ask you to leave.”

“We never would have come here if we'd known you had a female sim,” Ken said. They glared at each other. Hoping he was forgotten, Matt started toward the back of the house again.

“Wait!” Melody said. Resentfully, he turned back. He was tired of her trying to tell him things that obviously weren't so. What she said, though, did not look to have anything to do with his lust for Lucy: “You remember that I'm Henry Quick's great-great-granddaughter, don't you, Matt?”

He nodded. That was one reason, and a big one, why he'd gone along when she and Ken and Dee came bursting into his room in the tower. No one connected with Henry Quick could mean harm to a sim. He was sure of that.

“Then please believe me, in Henry Quick's name, when I tell you that you shouldn't couple with Lucy, or with any other female sim out here,” Melody said earnestly. “Please, Matt.”

He looked away from her. He did not think she was lying. He wished he did.
Not understand
, he signed.

She sighed. “I know, Matt. Will you do as I ask anyhow?”

Yes
, he signed, giving up with more than a twinge of regret—this Lucy was quite a desirable female.
Hand all right
? he asked.

“Is that sarcasm?” Saul asked.

“Hush,” Melody said. “Of course not.” She turned back to Matt. “Yes, of course using your hand is all right.… You might go into another room first.”

Matt went, thinking grumpily that people from outside the towers, even if they were related to Henry Quick, complained about every little thing. Then he thought of Lucy again, and the heat of that thought drove from his mind any worries about people.